Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

As Dr. O' Connor mentioned, we have a skills and labour market research unit which is actively working on an analysis of future skills needs in the green space. We think of those in terms of three broad categories, one of which is green skills for construction. This relates to things like retrofitting and we have a reasonably good handle on the scale of the skills needs in that area.

Interesting research that we have got to date from the Skills and Labour Market Research Unit, SLMRU, suggests that when you go beyond that, it is not so much about specific green jobs in five, ten or 15 years. Rather, many jobs will require a sustainability or a green skills component. If agriculture, for example, is going to be sustainable, we will need a wide base of farmers and their employees who have that deep understanding of green skills and energy management, emissions, and minimising carbon footprint. Manufacturing is another area. If we are going to meet our targets, the whole industry of meat processing has to change. Green skills for careers is about embedding green skills into particular industries and occupations, rather than bringing in 50,000 new green jobs. That is what we seem to be hearing already. The biggest part of this are agents of change. We should make sure that every learner who does a further education and training course is given a module in sustainability, on minimising carbon footprint, and on green skills. There is an ambition in the further education and training, FET, strategy to embed that across every FET offering. We could do that across the entire tertiary space and, as we have heard, start embedding it at school level as well. That is how we will start to change the dial on this.